Use Google to Research and Dominate Google in 2009

It’s no secret Google is beginning to dominate their own search results. As Google already dominates the search market, it looks as if Google’s grip on the online word is getting tighter. In this post, we will look at the tools and properties Google provides you with to keep up in 2009.

1. Google Trends

Google trends allows you to check what is hot on Google at any given moment in time and thus tells you what is going on in the world of search.

At present these trends are all very U.S centric. I have no real idea what half of these are about. You can click to get “More Hot Trends”. You can also click on a keyword to get extra information.

Again this data is all very U.S focused. But does provide a wealth of content for IM marketers. You can alter the data to see what was hot over a specific date range. This will allows you to plan in advance for seasonal trends and pick up traffic as near to the peak as possible. I have already covered using Google Trends in another post.

2. Google Blog Search

Google Blog search is another resource that can be used to find what is hot online. Taking a look at each of the different categories allows you to see what is being posted about right now (what people are talking about).

3. Google Product Search

Google Product Search used to be called Froogle (which is now called Google Base) and again allows you to search for products listed on Google Base. Again this property allows you to see what products are being searched for right now.

Looking at an individual product brings up a set of the most popular results:

This provides ecommerce sites with great opportunities to get their products listed in a location that can drive traffic straight through to their website. But they are not the only people who will be able to take advantage of Google Product search in this way. Affiliate marketers may be able to use Google Base to upload links to their own sites advertising these products (something I am keeping an eye on).

4. Google Base

Google base is set to be a big player in the search results. Users can add content such as products (displayed in Google Product search), events, recipes, housing. The list is endless. If you are looking for extra traffic, start adding your content to Google Base. A quick method of doing this is creating an XML feed of your content and adding it to Google Base. For example, if you selling products on your site and accept user reviews. You may be able to create two seperate feeds, one for products, one for reviews and plug them into Google Base.

Universal Search

1. Youtube

We all know the story with Youtube. Google is trying hard to monetize this site. Nearly all the video content you see in search results is from Youtube. How to get your video content ranked above others is something that needs to be covered by another article. But one thing you can do is create a video sitemap. This may get your video to appear as thumbnails in the search results. Some great info can be found here

2. Google News

Getting listed on Google news is not an easy task, in fact it can be extremely difficult. There are a lot of loops to jump through. You need to be publishing your own content. You need to show there are editors working on this content. As a small marketer you may still be able to get listed on Google News by releasing press releases and getting those releases picked up by news sites that are listed.

3. Google Blogs

We have already discussed Google Blog search. Google does display a lot of content from blogs. If you are a company without a blog then get one and start adding proper value to it.

4. Google Knol

Google Knol is Googles version of Wiki. If you already have an adwords account you can begin to add data to it straight away. This is another source of traffic. It is also draws the question, will Google favour results from Google Knol over other content. Aaron wall recently did a great post on Google Knol, which is worth reading.

5. Google Image Search

We all know about Google image search by now. Tag your images and turn on enhanced image search in Google Webmaster tools.

There you go. Google is starting to look like a content network so you better make sure your content is included in as much of that network as possible.